Don’t Let a Few Lost Minutes Sink Your Productivity!

How long does it take to boot up your computer when you start your workday? Most people would be fine with a one minute boot time; five minutes can get a little annoying, and anything longer than ten minutes warrants a coffee break. You may not have realized it, but a few extra minutes of boot time can impact the productivity of your company in a big way.

By the Numbers: How a Few Minutes Can Really Add Up
To illustrate our point, let's analyze the five minute boot time. Take those five minutes and multiply it by five days. Now multiply that figure by 50 work weeks and you're looking at a total of 20.8 hours each year that one employee will sit idle at his or her desk waiting for their computer to load. This figure applies to one employee. For the sake of working with an even number, lets multiply this by ten employees, each with a workstation that takes five minutes to boot, and you're now looking at a loss of 208 hours in one year (8.6 work days). Also, if your business happens to be using a fleet of old computers that each have ten minute boot times, then you will want to double these numbers.

Looking at equations like these make efficiency experts hot to trot, and it really shines a light on the importance of saving a few minutes here and there. Efficiency experts will go through their workday and see what habits they can change in order to do their jobs faster and better. Seasoned veterans of productivity understand that making adjustments to how one uses technology is an easy way gain these precious minutes. Take all of this into consideration and you can see why investing in your technology is worth it. For example, improving your company's workstations' boot time by just five minutes may gain you 20 hours of productivity from each employee!

Prevent Wasted Time with Upgrades and PC Maintenances
One ways to improve boot time is to update your software. Knowing the importance of a fast boot time, Microsoft designed Windows 8 to have a blazing-fast boot time of eight seconds on a decent machine. Eight seconds is such a small amount of time that it's barely long enough to check the notifications on your smartphone. Although, if you happen to be a bull rider at a rodeo, eight seconds will seem like an eternity, but we digress.

The best way to keep PC boot times down to a minimum is to make sure that your computer is properly maintained. There are dozens of different factors that can slow down a PC, like a fragmented disc drive, full caches, bloatware, malware and other computer viruses, outdated software riddled with bugs, and much more. It's a time-consuming task to stay on top of these maintenances with just one computer, much less with a network full of computers.

Traditionally, businesses have kept their fleet of workstations running efficiently by having an IT technician on staff. With this model of IT service, a request is put in to IT whenever a computer shows signs of slowing down. The resident technology expert will then stop by to take care of the issue. This model of computer maintenance is still widely used in businesses today, but an efficiency expert can easily spot the flaw of doing IT this way.

Increase Overall Efficiency By Outsourcing Your IT
If it's your goal to run a highly efficient operation where five minutes here and there are saved for the sake of increasing your overall productivity, then going with an in-house technician to perform maintenances may not be the best move. This is because in-house technicians will typically work the same hours as everyone else, meaning that major PC maintenances will be performed while both the PC user and the technician are on the clock. In a typical PC maintenance scenario like this, the technician will perform a "quick fix" on an employee's computer while the employee sits off to the side twiddling their thumbs being unproductive, thus canceling out any efficiency that would otherwise be gained.

By outsourcing your IT with Macro Systems, we're able to remotely manage your system by performing PC maintenances that keep your company's computers running smoothly. Because we don't want to disrupt the workflow of your business, we make sure to perform many of these maintenances after hours when you and your staff are away from the office. With this approach to IT, you can be confident that when you start your workday by booting up your PC, the boot speed will be as fast as possible, saving you precious minutes so you can accomplish your work at maximum efficiency!

To get the most productivity possible out of your technology, give Macro Systems a call at 703-359-9211!